


True Colors

by karlbourbon



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 15:10:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1609565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karlbourbon/pseuds/karlbourbon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim associates things with colors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True Colors

Jim associates things with colors. He always has; feelings, people, letters, and numbers- all of them had a color. He never knew it wasn’t “normal” until it was pointed out to him.

“Oh, Bones, you made a typo here. The colors are wrong, it should be an ‘i’ not an ‘e,’” Jim had said offhandedly as he proofread Leonard’s paper.

“The colors are wrong,” Leonard repeated.

“Yes.” Jim frowned. “Can’t you see them?”

It was Leonard’s turn to frown, though that was usually the default expression on his face. “No. Are you saying you see letters as colors? Does this happen with other things too?”

“Yes. Is… is that bad or something?”

“No!” Leonard quickly reassured him. “It’s a neurological phenomenon. You must have grapheme-color synesthesia; it just means you associate stuff with colors is all.”

“Oh,” Jim replied. And that had been it.

*

After being informed of his synesthesia, Jim couldn’t help but be consciously aware of every time it happened.

When he studied Vulcan for xenolinguistics, the words were the color of a sunset over a desert. Shades of red and brown and golden yellows, warm like the planet itself, swirled in front of his eyes.

Some days, he felt grey—frustrated, but determined. He was the color of a cresting wave in a storm, battering and crashing against the shoreline with everything he had. He was the color of a raging river, eroding rocks and destroying, but leaving in its wake a beautiful canyon, if you were to calmly take a step back and look.

Jim saw Leonard as blue, and not just because of the color of his uniform. He was a pale robin egg blue—speckled because nobody is perfect—the color of a fragile shell giving life to another soul. He was a doctor, a healer, a comfort, through and through.

*

“You make me feel orange,” Jim whispers and they’re cuddled in bed together. His head is pillowed on Leonard’s bare shoulder; his hand rests over a steadily beating heart. The sweat has long since dried on their bodies and he’s not sure if Bones is even still awake. “You touch me and I feel on fire. I feel like I’m burning, and I’m scared someone will snuff out the flame and I’ll be left breathless.”

Jim swallows heavily, trying to dispel the emotions threatening to choke him. “I can’t lose you, Bones.”

“I’m not going anywhere, kid,” is the murmured reply.

Jim stills, a deer caught in the headlights, and only relaxes again when he feels Bones carding fingers through his soft, blond hair.

Leonard halts the movement of his hand to nuzzle the top of Jim’s head. “I see your true colors and that’s why I love you.”

The joke about Leonard being able to see colors the same way as Jim does what it was meant to, making the tension that had settled in the air between them dissipate. Jim lets out a soft chuckle.

“Isn’t that from an old song?”

Leonard kisses the top of Jim’s head and smiles. “It might be old, but it’s no less true. You’re beautiful like a rainbow.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Cyndi Lauper's song "True Colors" as well as my own synesthesia.


End file.
